I’ve owned a few Orbita Sparta deluxe winders, and the older ones that I own, though still only 10 months old, the motors they shipped with were quite noisy. Not a huge problem for a winder that only winds for 5-10 seconds every 10 or 15 minutes depending on the cycle. I ended up selling one of them, but still have two of the deluxe models, one with a noisy motor, and one with a nice quiet one. The noisy one bugged me, so I emailed Orbita.
My Sparta Deluxe Winder looks like this:
A nice lady named Cheryl emailed me back quite promptly, and we conversed via email and she said that it would be replaced under warranty if I could provide the serial number to her as proof. WOW! That made me a happy guy. I was perfectly willing to pay money for the new quieter motor, but she said that it would be replaced free of charge, which really made my day.
I sent her the serial number and she sent me an email a few days later indicating it would be shipped out. I received it a couple weeks after our emails via Fedex, installed it in my winder, and it is now dead silent! I love it.
I really have to say that my experience with Orbita Watchwinder’s customer service was among the best I have ever experienced, and that all my further winder purchases will be made through them, not just due to the customer service (other winder companies have also been good) but because of the excellent product as well.
This video I made last week, and showcases a Project I made, after purchasing half a dozen Breitling dials on ebay. I got them for a decent price, of $1 each, unfortunately the guy charged me almost $10 each to ship! I guess he was unhappy about the ending bid price. I ended up getting a custom Matte made for a frame that I picked up that would suit the dials. The outcome was very nice, and I finished it up with a metal sticker/label with custom Breitling text written on it.
The dials are mounted on fiberboard and attached to the matte and then set into the frame. Great way to add Breitling decoration to the den!
Looks like Tiffany & Co has joined up with Nicholas G Hayek and company to have their watches built by the Swiss Watch Giant. This would appear to be a smart for both companies, as having the Swatch Group handle Tiffany and Co watches will improve their quality and desirability on the market.
Tiffany makes great jewelry, now maybe they will start making some WIS worthy timepeices as well!
With the explosive growth of the luxury watch in the last 5-10 years, its suprising to hear one name not commonly associated with high-end watches come up over and over again: Timex. Yes, that Timex. The same Timex that makes drugstore watches and supplies the bulk of the inventory for Wal-Mart and makes the tried and true Ironman Watches with their familiar Velcro Nylon straps.
Here are a couple of watches from the TX (Techno Luxury) Line of watches from TX’s 700 series. They come in very large sizes, and look quite nice.. some as large as 46mm.
However, there is more to the new Timex than just the new TX Watches (www.txwatches.com). The Timex Group consists of several brands and licenses which now include: Vincent Berard, Versace, Versus, Valentino, Salvatore Ferragamo, Guess, Helix, Nautica, Mark Ecko, Avirex, Timex, TX, Acqua, and Carriage. They are spread among 5 divisions based in Switzerland and the USA.
I was quite surprised to find out that the Versace watches were owned by the Timex Group. I had been considering the purchase of one of them for my girlfriend for a while, and have actually owned a couple as you might have known from reading my previous articles. These automatics had nice decorated swiss ETA movements in them, hardly something I would have associated with the Timex brand.
Some of the offerings from the Timex Group include the Versace DV One, in black ceramic – a very beautiful jewelry watch:
But the real suprise is the company that sits at the top of Timex Group, in the same way Breguet sits at the top of the Swatch Group, but with much less esteemed company so-to-speak. The company is Vincent Berard. The company makes less than 100 watches a year, priced at around $70,000 a pop, and is a premier small manufacture brand.
Here is an example of his work, the esteemed Luvorene 1. Read more about it here.
Will the Timex Group soon join the ranks of the Swatch Group, Richemont and LVMH? It will be interesting to see what happens..
